Long Live Art Bell—Icon of the Night

The life of Art Bell is impossible to encapsulate or summarize. He brought to global consciousness ideas that have a memetic voracity and staying power as powerful Einstein’s; and he did so with a flare, style, and humor that was entirely unique unto himself. Even after he left his brainchild, Coast to Coast AM, he effortlessly spawned multiple generations of alternative media talking heads, researchers, and authors—be they mainstream, underground, or online. People who don’t even know they have been influenced by Bell produce material that carry his torch, and they have done so for decades. Whether it in the form of the ‘X-Files’ or ‘The Sixth Sense’, it is all the spawn of Art Bell. Here is an individual who brought earthly culture everything from demonic possession to the most vanguard physics—and he did so all night long. Bell was a fountainhead and a nexus for what he called the Quickening—that something deeply odd rested at the heart of existence. And this oddity seems to be growing in leaps and bounds by the day. Furthermore, he was a marvelous story-teller, and he was capable of prying the most interesting possibilities from his thousands of guests and callers. He was also simply a great talker—a talker that, if you’re in the business of talking, stands as an icon among icons. Bell was the Larry King of the weird and wonderful. Bell is the American campfire ghost story. Lastly, for us nocturnal creatures, Bell was the captain of the nightscape’s immeasurable legions. He was the legend of legends. And accomplished all of this largely from his home studio. All of YouTube and podcasting is but the aftermath of Art Bell’s operation. His auspicious death on Friday the 13th strikes with Bell’s own signature supernatural dazzle, so that one can not help but think that maybe—just maybe—there really is something to this paranormal avalanche after all. So with admiration and affection, I will share one of my favorite pieces he ever produced—the story of The Shadow People and the Native American mystery school elders who have been engaging them in secret for centuries. So one more time from The Kingdom of Nye, it’s Art Bell! Wanna take a ride?